Saturday, May 4, 2024
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Jason Sherman is a reporter for Inside Defense. For more than two decades -- including stints with Defense News and Armed Forces Journal -- he has covered the Pentagon, defense industry, the military budget, weapon system acquisition and defense policy formulation as well as reporting on technology, business, and global arms trade. Jason has traveled to more than 40 countries, studied medieval history at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and lives in Brooklyn.
The Defense Department has notified Congress that the U.S. military will begin seeking foreign sources of a special type of steel used to fortify ground vehicles against armor-piercing explosively formed penetrators (EFP), according to a senior Army official.
In response to a previously unreported urgent request from commanders in Iraq to improve all humvees' defenses against roadside bombs, the Defense Department is expanding purchases of its most advanced bolt-on armor and increasing buys of jamming systems that are effective at thwarting radio-controlled improvised explosive devices.
Anticipating a production surge of new blast-proof trucks in the next few months, the Defense Department expects to begin moving large numbers of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles -- heretofore almost exclusively airlifted to Iraq -- on ships, according to the U.S. military's transportation chief.
U.S. Southern Command is preparing proposals to overhaul its Miami headquarters to make room for civilian agencies to work alongside military officials, designing a new approach to planning with the State Department and other federal agencies that could become a model for other combatant commands.
The new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has directed the U.S. military to look beyond operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and prepare for "what comes after" those ground-centric campaigns in new guidance that also calls for the Pentagon to provide clear estimates of what is required to reset military units in the program and budget process.
The Pentagon wants Congress to partially restore funds cut from the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle program to keep the humvee-replacement effort on its new acquisition path and provide resources for technology demonstration contract awards early in 2008, according to a draft Defense Department appeal to lawmakers preparing the fiscal year 2008 spending bill.
The Army and Marine Corps are girding for as much as a two-year delay to the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle program in the wake of the Pentagon's decision to allow more time to develop technologies needed for the next-generation family of vehicles, slated to replace the military's vast humvee fleet, according to a senior Defense Department official.
Senior Air Force brass this week said their service is facing a $9 billion shortfall in fiscal year 2009, a deficit precipitating a "modernization crisis" and propelling a proposal to seek billions of additional dollars from the Office of the Secretary of Defense to buy more aircraft, including as many as 20 F-22A fighters beyond the planned buy of 183.
The Navy's new strategy -- set to be unveiled next month -- is already informing investment decisions in the service's early work on its new six-year spending plan, according to the Navy's top officer.
Navy officials today are meeting with General Dynamics to discuss the service's recent request to switch the contract for the Littoral Combat Ship to a fixed-price deal in a bid to rein in ballooning costs for the design and construction of the shore-hugging vessels, according to a source familiar with the discussions.
The Defense Department's top requirements officer has directed the Army to articulate its overarching strategy for modernizing and sustaining its wheeled-vehicle fleet over the next dozen years, a vision that should address long-term plans for 10,000 new blast-proof trucks the service seeks to acquire.
Concerns about the adequacy of a plan to replace the U.S. military's humvee fleet with a newly designed, next-generation family of vehicles have prompted the Pentagon to put the brakes on the Army and Marine Corps' Joint Light Tactical Vehicle competition.
The Pentagon's move to raise the number of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles it aims to acquire for the Army is based on what the Office of the Secretary of Defense believes the industrial base can produce in the near term, according to a senior Army official.
The Defense Department appears to be setting the stage for fielding Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles -- heretofore designated only for troops in Iraq -- to U.S. personnel in Afghanistan, a development that would expand the use of the new blast-proof trucks into a second operational theater and might have implications for the total size of the program.
The Defense Department wants to keep select spending accounts, including those funding high-priority weapon system programs like the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle effort, flush with cash in case the new fiscal year begins before a new base budget or war spending package is passed by Congress.
Hoping to make sure newly minted Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles are ready to be whisked to Iraq as soon as possible, the Defense Department is working to slash the time required to outfit them with communications, navigation and classified radio-jamming capabilities from nearly a month down to a week, according to government officials.
While the Army is slated to receive the lion's share of the Pentagon's new Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle fleet, the service's logisticians will eventually face a daunting task -- maintaining an armada of different blast-proof trucks manufactured by five different vendors.
The military services are putting the finishing touches on their estimates of how much money will be needed to continue operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in fiscal year 2009, a rough calculation that, according to Pentagon officials, is expected to total somewhere between $140 billion and $200 billion.
It's official: the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle program has formally joined the ranks of the Defense Department's big-ticket weapon programs.
The Defense Department is planning to award contracts next month for additional Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles in order to avoid a production gap, giving armored truck makers adequate time to order materials necessary to sustain peak manufacturing rates into early spring, according to a senior Pentagon official.